


In Full Flight

by poor_nell



Category: Homeland
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Spies & Secret Agents, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23717863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poor_nell/pseuds/poor_nell
Summary: This is an alternate version of Homeland 8x09: “In Full Flight,” including only scenes in which something has changed. A number of lines from the original script (written by Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon, Nick Leith Baker and Jonathan Redding) appear, interwoven with new ones. Here Carrie tries to stay one step ahead of Yevgeny — but gets trapped just the same.
Relationships: Carrie Mathison/Evgeny Gromov, Carrie Mathison/Yevgeny Gromov
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	In Full Flight

SCENE: The hallway of the hotel in Kohat at night. Carrie has just told Yevgeny her theory that the helicopter crashed because of mechanical failure. Yevgeny leans against the wall; Carrie is framed in the doorway of her room, with the bed visible behind her.

YEVGENY: Is there anything else you want to tell me? 

CARRIE: No. I think I'm fresh out of secrets. 

YEVGENY: I’ll be in the next room if you need anything. Just bang on the wall. 

CARRIE: (laughs) O.K.

YEVGENY: Spokoyny nochi.

CUT TO the dingy little bathroom off Carrie’s hotel room, with a drain in the middle of the slanting floor and a hand-held showerhead that Carrie uses to rinse what we can see of her bare shoulders. It was only that morning — another lifetime — when she waited next to Max’s body for Saul to come, and drew her gun on the Special Ops team that tried to restrain her. But the past is a luxury; she can live nowhere but now.

CUT TO the inside of Carrie’s room, where she pulls a shirt over her head and shakes free her hair. It’s cold at night in northern Pakistan and there’s no heat in the room; she wears a long-sleeved black top and black leggings, ready to huddle under the covers. But instead of lying down she paces, trying to make up her mind. She goes to the wall, puts her head up against it, listens, hesitates. She knows Yevgeny is on the other side. 

She taps on the wall with her knuckles, once softly, then three times, louder. She stands there a moment, exhales, lifts her hand as if to knock again, then hurries over to the window, jittery, and flings open the shutters, needing air. The narrow street is bare and unlit, low buildings under a tracery of electric wires.

There’s a knock on the door. She swings her head to look back over her shoulder, waits a beat, then closes the shutters. 

CUT TO a view of the door from the hallway as Carrie opens it to see Yevgeny — a reverse of when he opened the door for her back in Kabul. Neither of them says a word. She opens the door ever so slightly wider and gives the smallest of nods for him to come in.

CUT TO the inside of the room. He stands a few feet away from her; she’s got her back to the door. He’s waiting for her to speak. He’s got all the time in the world.

CARRIE: What’s going to happen when we get the black box? Are you going to help me get it to the American embassy in Islamabad? Or are you going to take it from me by force?

YEVGENY tilts his head and looks down at her through half-hooded eyes, like a lion pretending to be half-asleep.

YEVGENY: What would you do, if you were me?

CARRIE: I’d stop a nuclear war. This isn’t about your side or my side. There are millions of lives at stake, innocent lives. You think this’ll be contained? You told Gulom you were worried about sh*t oozing over the border into Tajikistan, going all the way to Moscow. You want to see us self-destruct? You’ll go down with us. No one, nowhere will be safe.

YEVGENY: (scoffs) You don’t even know what the box says.

CARRIE: You know I’m right.

She is wound up tight. He is, as ever, languorous; in another era, he’d choose this moment to very slowly light a cigarette.

YEVGENY: If I wanted the box, you think I couldn’t find it without you?

A beat, and then the pieces fall together. 

CARRIE: You want me to  know you have it, and that it’s the real thing. You don’t give a f*ck about the box. If you did, you’d have had the Taliban secure it from the crash site in the first place. You just want it as leverage for something else. But what? 

She has been getting closer to him with each sentence. Now they are inches apart.

CARRIE: It would save us both a lot of trouble if you just told me what you want.

Silence. Her face is a dare, his a wall. Then he pulls her to him and they kiss like there’s no other way out, like it might hurt if they stop. It starts as a performance, two brilliant liars trying to outdo each other, but they’re so intent, so committed, they lose themselves a little, her hands under his shirt, his hands closing around her skull. 

CUT TO the bed and them falling into it, him throwing her or her dragging him down, who can tell, already half-undressed, going too fast, and then Yevgeny stops, because he’s found them — the cluster of scars down the inside of her upper arm, where the torturers at Lefortovo burned her, in a place they knew would stay hidden. He turns her arm so he can see them clearly, the skin pale around the dark ridged whorls, and she lets him, lying still, watching how careful he is not to touch the damaged skin; the way she traced Brody’s scars so long ago. When he kisses her there, gently, it’s an admission:  I know what we did to you.

*

SCENE: Carrie’s hotel room in late afternoon. After searching through the bazaar, finding Max’s rucksack and arranging a midnight meeting to get the flight recorder, Carrie has retreated to the hotel with Viktor while Yevgeny leads the exfil team astray. When Yevgeny enters, it’s not the coolly loping Yevgeny from before, calculating each gesture, but a cobra uncoiling. Upakovat sumki, he snaps at Viktor: Pack the bags. Carrie refuses to leave; Yevgeny brusquely demands it — there are too many men hunting her.

CARRIE: (frantic) H-hold on. 

YEVGENY: What? Tell me. 

CARRIE: (echoing Yevgeny at the village where they found Max) Let me take care of this. 

CUT TO Kabul station. Jenna passes Mike and ALAN on her way to the elevators.

JENNA: Night, Mike. (phone rings) Hello. 

INERCUT between Kabul station and Carrie’s room in Kohat. Carrie stands by the bed and Yevgeny watches her from the couch.

CARRIE: Jenna, I need you to listen carefully. 

JENNA: Carrie? 

CARRIE: I’ve got a lead on the Chalk Two flight recorder. 

JENNA: Where are you? 

CARRIE: You know exactly where I am. And before you bring Mike into this, just hear me out. 

JENNA: You played me. All that bullsh*t about trusting me to find Max. 

CARRIE: Saul and Mike ordered me Stateside. I had no choice. 

JENNA: Except to work with a GRU officer. 

CARRIE: Yevgeny Gromov found Max. Not you, not Mike. So suspend the f*cking judgment for a second, O.K.? I told you exactly where Max was and you did nothing. Now he’s dead.

(takes a deep breath)

We are on the verge of war with a nuclear power. We need that flight recorder. And I need your help.

JENNA: Help how?

CARRIE: I found the broker who has the box. We’re meeting tomorrow morning. But if the exfil team keeps mucking around asking questions, he’ll spook.

JENNA: That’s convenient.

CARRIE: (exasperated) I’m not even in Kohat right now. We pulled out for the night — saw our guys coming from a mile away. We’re heading back in the morning and that’s when I need them.

JENNA: What do you mean?

Carrie doesn’t look at Yevgeny, but he’s visible, blurred, over her shoulder.

CARRIE: I need them to help me get the flight recorder out of Kohat, in case Yevgeny drops the friendship act and tries to take it by force.

JENNA: You want our guys to back off tonight — and then meet you in the morning to help you get the flight recorder? Is that what you’re saying?

CARRIE: Yes. Look, I know you have no reason to trust me, but I swear to you, I am telling the truth. And this could very well determine whether or not we go to war with Pakistan. 

CUT TO Mike’s glassed-in office. Mike is standing with his fists pressed down on the desk, eyes close to slits: a hobbled hawk. Jenna is folded in on herself, steeling for a fight. She desperately wants to be part of whatever happens next.

MIKE: She’s lying.

JENNA: Saul Berenson said she was looking for the flight recorder. You think he’s lying too? (unconsciously using Carrie’s words) She’s not even in Kohat any more — they pulled out as soon as they saw the team. 

MIKE sighs loudly, making a big show of it, even though Jenna is his only audience. Jenna sets her jaw. She’s coming out of the gate.

JENNA: If she wanted to defect, she’d be in Moscow by now. What’ve we got to lose? She’s already ditched the team. At least now we have a chance to bring her in. (beat) Let me take this, Mike. If she runs, I’ll take the fall.

CUT TO Carrie’s room. She sits down on the bed, looking slightly stunned at herself.

CARRIE: (tired and a little sad) I think we're good. 

YEVGENY: You were good. Your story was clever, convincing. You trust yourself in the moment. Your instincts. I like that. 

CARRIE: Why, how do you do it? 

YEVGENY: Me? I'm more of a planner. 

CARRIE: Speaking of planning… (beat) That day outside Gulom's office. Was that a coincidence?

It‘s not an attack; she is genuinely asking. For a moment he doesn’t know how to get out of answering. Then the phone buzzes and he rises and in two strides he’s across the room and next to Carrie, bending to hear the call.

CUT TO Kabul station and Jenna’s face.

JENNA: You have until 9 A.M. We don’t hear from you, the team goes in.

CUT TO Carrie’s hotel room.

CARRIE: The broker’s texting me the location after dawn prayer. I’ll send it then. (phone clicks off)

YEVGENY: You think you can trust her? 

CARRIE: She’s not good at lying. Yet.

She rises and crosses to the desk, flinging the phone down, as if she needs to get away from him to breathe.

YEVGENY: Maybe you should teach her. 

She has her back to him and exhales, shaking her head.

CARRIE: I’m a terrible teacher. Neither patient nor kind.

YEVGENY: The best lies are when you tell mostly the truth, right? (beat) The broker. The meeting in the morning. 

Carrie’s face shuts down. The camera stays on her with Yevgeny visible behind her, half haloed in the light fracturing through the window.

YEVGENY: When were you going to tell me?

She turns toward him. Now they are both in the frame, him slouching slightly but still impossibly tall, her whole body taut and furious.

CARRIE: The meeting’s at midnight. And when are you going to tell me what I have to do to get the flight recorder to the embassy?

YEVGENY: You asked me that last night.

CARRIE: That wasn’t an answer. That was a timeout. (beat) What’s the price, Yevgeny? What the hell do you want? Or what does the Kremlin want, if you want to go on pretending the two aren’t the same?

She searches his face; he betrays nothing. And then he decides.

YEVGENY: A name. That only Saul Berenson knows. 

Very slowly, almost imperceptibly, he starts to close the distance between them.

YEVGENY: Saul is running an agent inside the Kremlin. That person has been sending him information for decades. Not a river. A drop at a time. Secrets that could only have come from someone at the highest level.

It’s preposterous. Carrie almost laughs. But Yevgeny is deadly serious.

CARRIE: It’s not true. There is no such person. Believe me, I would know. After all these years, I would have had some indication. It’s just a story Saul probably made up himself.

YEVGENY: That’s what he wants you to believe. But there is no other explanation for the damages done to my country.

CARRIE: Look, even if this person did exist —

YEVGENY: They do.

CARRIE: Saul is not going to give him up. Not to me, not to anybody. That is his one commandment: You never give up an asset. There’s nothing I can do.

YEVGENY: You have to find him yourself.

CARRIE: You are not hearing me. It’s not possible.

YEVGENY: Nobody’s saying it will be easy.

CARRIE: Yevgeny, please. I’ll do anything else. I can’t betray Saul.

YEVGENY: (speaking somewhere between a shush and a hiss) From what I’ve seen, you can do just about anything.

Something crosses her face, then she masters herself.

CARRIE: And you’ll let me keep the flight recorder.

YEVGENY: No. Your word is not enough.

CARRIE: (cries out) Then what?

She turns away from him, breathing hard. She can’t see beyond the next step: protecting the flight recorder at whatever cost, to prevent war, even if it means sacrificing herself and Saul. She turns back to Yevgeny.

CARRIE: Kompromat. You wire money into my account. A series of small amounts, enough to show a pattern. 

YEVGENY cocks his head and says nothing. He needs more.

CARRIE: And we make a recording that shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m working for your side. If I don’t comply, you send it to whomever you want.

Once again she’s improvising, trusting herself in the moment, with the recklessness of someone who’s destroyed herself before, who’s made an art of it.

CUT TO a view of the room through a phone set to video-record, propped up on the desk. Carrie is pacing by the bed, agitated. Yevgeny moves into the frame, appraising her.

CARRIE: I can’t betray Saul.

YEVGENY: From what I’ve seen, you can do just about anything.

Carrie’s eyes are wet, her mouth trembling: a bravura performance. 

CARRIE: You know I’m not doing this for the money. Or for those f*ckers in the Kremlin. (beat) I’m doing it for you.

YEVGENY: (very softly) I know.

He touches her face, a handler comforting an asset who’s unraveling, like she did for Brody at the motel long ago. When he kisses her she doesn’t move, as if for a moment she’s died to herself, and then she gives in.

*

SCENE: The backroom of the shop where Carrie found Max’s rucksack. It is the dead of night. Carrie has made her getaway from the hotel room, climbing down the pipes to the street — in case someone from the exfil team is watching, she wants it to look like she’s running away from Yevgeny — and after she sets up the million-dollar transfer for the flight recorder, she pulls a gun on the broker and he slinks off. She tucks the gun behind her back and sits down to listen to the tape, so rapt, so certain of her victory, that she doesn’t see Yevgeny until he’s looming over her.

CARRIE: Yevgeny. I told you, you can’t be here. I called Jenna. The exfil team is on their way. They’ll try to take you.

YEVGENY: (implacable) I want to hear it. 

He takes the earbud out of her right ear and tucks it into his own, then rewinds the tape. As with the phone call earlier, they listen together. When it’s over, he tosses the earbud on the table.

YEVGENY: F*cking helicopters.

He rises and Carrie does the same, watching him closely. She told him she was meeting the broker at midnight, but not where, and he wasn’t supposed to follow her.

CARRIE: We have a deal.

CUT TO a view of the room from behind Carrie. We can see the gun in her waistband, within easy reach. Yevgeny contemplates her as if from a vast indifference, blinking slowly. With her blond hair blazing she looks like a small angry candle. Then he bows his head slightly and once again he has turned his back on her and he is walking away, this rangy shade, this ripple in darkness.

CARRIE watches him leave, then quickly packs her laptop and the flight recorder.

CUT TO the hallway outside the main room of the shop. Carrie is carrying the flight recorder and halts, remembering that she left Max’s rucksack on the counter. She finds it and picks it up almost tenderly, running her fingers over the stitched name: PIOTROWSKI. She puts the flight recorder inside the rucksack and shrugs it onto her shoulders. 

At the door to the street, she lifts the scarf over her head and takes a breath.

CUT TO the street. The exfil team is waiting, guns out. The door opens and Carrie lifts up her hands, gets down on her knees, and they wrest away the rucksack and her bag and cuff her wrists behind her back.

YEVGENY is gone.

*

SCENE: An unknown interior. The video of Carrie and Yevgeny is playing on a phone leaning against a dark laptop screen.

CARRIE: I can’t betray Saul.

YEVGENY: From what I’ve seen, you can do just about anything.

CARRIE: You know I’m not doing this for the money. Or for those f*ckers in the Kremlin. I’m doing it for you.

YEVGENY: I know.

CUT TO Saul, sitting at his desk and staring at the phone. We can’t see Carrie and Yevgeny any more, but we can hear their breathing, all ragged edges, the faintest echo of Carrie and Brody in that motel long ago and the grotesquerie of the whole team listening in; how Saul defended her, how Brody nearly destroyed her. Saul can feel the years now, the weight of them, bearing down, and he stabs at the phone so the video stops. 

Then there is only Saul’s face.

***


End file.
